THE LIMITS OF HUMAN AUTOMATISM. 307 



any interference, at the tinal stage, with the strict sequence of 

 cause and effect, he impUcitly admitted the independence or 

 unconditioned agency of the Ego in the formation of his character. 

 " I saw," he says, " that though our character is formed bycircum- 

 " stances, our own desire can do much to shape those circum- 

 " stances ; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the 

 " doctrine of free-will, is the conviction that ive have real ponier over 

 " the formation of our own character ; that our will, by influencing 

 " some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits and 

 "capacities of willing." I can attach no other meaning to this 

 remarkable passage (the teaching of which is more fully developed 

 in chap. i. of Book VI. of the "System of Logic"), than that it 

 recognizes a factor in the formation of our characters, which is 

 something else than *' heredity //z/x environments." For I can 

 scarcely suppose J. S. Mill not to have seen that if a man's desires 

 are themselves the results of antecedent " circumstances," the 

 incubus of hopeless slavery to those circumstances can no more 

 be removed by any desires for self-improvement which ex hypothesi 

 arise out of them, than a weight which bears down on a man's 

 shoulders can be lifted off by its own pressure. And any one who 

 reads in De Quincey's "Confessions" the graphic narrative of his 

 miserable experiences from the abuse of opium, will see how 

 ineffectual are the strongest desires, without the will to carry them 

 into effect. 



4. It may be confidently stated as a result of universal ex- 

 perience, that our "capacity of willing," that is, of giving a 

 preponderance to the motive on which we elect to act, depends, 

 first, upon our conviction that we really have such a self-deter- 

 mining power, and, secondly, upon our habitual exercise of it. 

 The case, which is unfortunately but too common, of a man who 

 habitually gives way to the desire for alcoholic excitement, and 

 is ruining himself and his family by his self-abandonment, will 

 bring into distinct view the practical bearing of the antagonistic 

 doctrines. 



The automatism of his nature (purely physical so far as the 

 bodily craving for alcohol is concerned, but including, in most 

 cases, some play of social instincts) furnishes an aggregate of 

 14 



